It had been late afternoon when he regained consciousness, meaning he had all evening and night to come to grips with his altered reality. Memories overlapped in his mind, racing past, one after the other. His first sword lesson and the last ice-cream cone he’d had with his mother. Laughing while having dinner with his aunt, kneeling in front of his father while being scolded. Getting his first job at thirteen and finally mastering the family’s basic sword technique, Power of the Stars. Eventually though, he finally fell asleep.
Mornings really sucked. Why couldn’t they just let him sleep in? “Good morning young lord” came a chipper tone as curtains were opened abruptly.
The light in his eyes made him groan as if he had suffered a great injury. He’d literally died yesterday. Couldn’t they give him a bit of slack? If there was another thing in common Atticus and Arcturius had, he’d learned it was the art of doing the bare minimum and resting as much as possible. Now that he could get behind.
“None of that now.” Aelnora admonished him “Up, up. Its time for the day to begin. In fact, the day should have begun over an hour ago. Taranth has been waiting for you for the past half hour.”
Arcturius grunted into his pillows as he remembered agreeing to breakfast to ease his big brother’s mind. “No good deed goes unpunished” he muttered in a sleepy voice.
He didn’t have a personal servant. He didn’t want to be minded all the time. Instead, all the servants tried to keep an eye on him in between their regular work. Aelnora was the one who attended to him the most though. It was annoying. Why couldn’t he just be left alone?
“What are you on about young lord? Hurry, hurry, dress into these and then head for the dining room” she tossed some clothes on the bed and then began to brush his hair as soon as he sat up.
Most of the servants gave him the proper respect due to an [ARCHDUKE], the title given to the son of a [DUKE]. Aelnora however, seemed to view him as some misbehaving kid, and treated him as such, at least while they were alone. Which in all honesty, he probably was. He could have been a brat about it and told the head staff of her disrespect, but she was only trying to look after him. Getting rid of her would be like shooting himself in the foot.
Hair brushed, she tied it into a ponytail with a black ribbon. That was good. In less than a day, Atticus had learned that long hair got in the way, a lot. A basin of water was grabbed from the closest dresser and a sponge was wiped across his eyes. That woke him up a bit. With a final command about getting dressed, the nosey maid left the room. Deciding that he was already halfway there, the teen jumped out of bed to put on fashionable, elven designed clothes. Ones completely different from what Atticus was used to. A diagonally buttoned, tunic-like, sparking, dark blue shirt that hugged his frame was just the top half of the ensemble. The pants were black and baggy, reaching all the way down to his ankles. Both items were silky to the touch. Memories told him that these were just inside clothes. They went with a pair of dark blue, silk slippers that had been left by the door.
Was this really necessary? Arcturius loved wearing inside clothes, Atticus hated it. Dredging through memories again he found he much preferred what would be typically worn during training. The shirt would still be buttoned, but it would also be looser and shorter, needing to be tucked into the much less baggy and slightly shorter pants. Actual shoes were paired with those sets of clothing, a pair of long boots. After breakfast, he would look through his closet to find those. There was no way he was wearing this all day. Finally he exited his room.
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Walking down the enormous halls of the main mansion on his family’s primary estate, Arcturius noticed a blinking green light in the corner of his vision. Oh right, this part of the universe had status screens. After reliving memories, he’d gone straight to sleep the previous day, meaning he hadn’t even noticed the blinking earlier. Focusing it, he opened the screen as he walked.
[STATUS]
KIND: [HUMANOID]
RACE: [CELESTIAL HIGH ELF] [CONQUERING RACE]
BLOODLINE: [GALAXYGAZER]
SEX: [MALE]
AGE: 15
NAME: [ARCTURIUS STARLEAF]
TITLE: [ARCHDUKE]
[LEVEL 13]
STR – 5
VIT – 5
AGI – 15
DEX – 15
CON – 5
INT – 13
WIS – 8
CHA – 9
PER – 6
Every being born began with one [VITALITY], one [CONSTITUTION] and one [WISDOM]. As the infant grew it would gain a few stats here and there, mainly in [VITALITY], [CONTITUTION] and [CHARISMA]. The young one would gain levels up to [LEVEL 15] or [LEVEL 20] gradually on their own, depending on if they were humanoid or beast, though slaying other beings did raise the level faster. Humanoids received two points into the attributes that played to the race’s strengths and two spare points per level. For elves in general this allocation was one into [AGILITY] and one into [INTELLIGENCE]. All humanoid races received at least one point in [INTELLIGENCE] per level up until [LEVEL 15], when they could choose a class. This inevitably changed the allocation ratios, and depending on the class, could completely change where the automatically placed stats were distributed.
Scanning the screen in front of him, Arcturius thought his stats weren’t that bad. Despite the amount of slacking off he did, there was mandatory training every day before his illness struck. Training to gain attributes was only really possible before gaining a class, afterwards it was almost impossible. Not entirely, but it was never worth the effort when you could just go out and level up through conquering a dungeon or going to war. Of those two options the young teen preferred the first option. Unfortunately the entire culture, mentality and ethos of the specific variant of elves he had been transmigrated into revolved around war and conquering the cosmos.
His race was literally called a [CONQUERING RACE]. No subtlety there. His thoughts trailed off as a servant pulled open the door to the dining room for him. More like dining hall. Like everything else in this place, the room was huge. Taranth was seated at one end of the very, long table and a place had been set for him at the other. Um, no. How was he supposed to talk to his brother from all the way over here? The whole point of this had been to ease the worries of his overprotective sibling so he would get off Acturius’ back. He didn’t think he could pull that off by yelling from the other end of the who knows how long table. Grabbing his cutlery, plate and cup there were gasps from the corners of the room as the elven teen walked past lots of chairs to sit on the right of his intended target.
Yes, this went against etiquette. But no one else was around, besides the servants who would surely gossip later. Taranth looked surprised for a moment before smoothing out his features again. Arcturius smirked at the extremely pleased look in his sibling’s eye that was unable to be hidden.